TONG AESTHETICS

OR

THE CITY OF WILLOWS

"The lodge was symbolically named 'The City of Willows' (mu-yang
ch'eng). (It) contained an inner sanctum called 'The Red Flower
Pavilion' (Hung Hua T'ing), in which the essential part
of the initiation took place, and where the secrets of the society
were revealed to the recruit . . . "

"In a full-scale ceremony, the ritual appears to be divided
into three main stages. The first stage consisted of the
recitation and dramatization of the Myth of Origin in the main
hall of the lodge. This was called 'performing the play' (tso-hsi
and 'watching the play' (kan-hsi) depending on whether
one was an active or passive participant; or 'releasing the horses'
(fang-ma), ('Horses" = recruits, or new recruits;
hsin~ting, 'new tops', was another naine for new recruits.)
The second part of the ritual consisted of the oath-taking
ceremony in the Red Flower Pavilion, the issuing of the certificates
of membership, and the exhibition of secret documents, furniture
and objects of the lodge to the members. The feast and theatricals
of celebration which followed after a few days formed the third
and final part of the initiation."

"All brethren who are brought hither are faithful and loyal:
they all are iron-galled and copper-livered. From the inexhaustible
metamorphoses are born millions of men, who are all of one mind
and one will. All these of one affection in the two capitals
and thirteen provinces have now come together to petition Father
Heaven and Mother Earth; the three lights, sun, moon (and stars);
all the Gods, Saints, Spirits and Buddhas and all the Star Princes,
to help all present to enlightenment. This night we pledge ourselves,
and vow this before Heaven, that the brethren in the whole universe
shall be as from one womb; as if born of one father, as if nourished
by one mother; as if of one root and origin; that we will obey
heaven and act according to its ways; that our loyal hearts shall
not change, and never alter. If the august Heaven will protect
and assist in the restoration of the Ming, then happiness will
have a place to which to return."

[NOTE: Fei-Ling Davis, Primitive Revolutionaries of China:
A Study ofSecret Societies of the Late Nineteenth Century
(Honolulu 1971), pp., 129, 135; see index under "City
of Willows"]

The City of Willows is the imaginal space of the traditional
Chinese Tong or secret society, (especially the Hung Triads),
its "Temple of Initiation".

[NOTE: see Henry Corbin, Temple and Contemplation (London
1986)]

The space itself, visionary or oneiric, contains within it (like
a hermetic "memory palace") the details of the political
myth of the Triads, based on conspiracy to overthrow the Manchu
dynasty and achieve the "restoration of the Ming", i.e.,
of.Chinese rule. G. Sorel would have understood this mythopoesis,
this passionate reading of a set of symbols which is like
a place but not a place, like a text but not a text; which prescribes
a "general stoke" or uprising in the language of legend;
which points to the future by pointing to the past, and to the
"Sea of Images."

[NOTE: The myth is made in a language of symbols -- a word
which originally meant the two halves of a token which must be
fitted together inorder to provide identification or meaning
-- like two spies with halves of a dollar bill, recognizing each
other by the exact fit of the torn edges. Every myth, we might
say, has at least two symbols, which are in effect halves or opposites
of each other. Hence the total ambiguity of myth: -- depending
on which half is "up", so to speak, a myth's meaning
can be seen to "turn into" its opposite. Sorel's myth
is no exception (indeed it seems odd that no one appears to have
thought of analysing it according to the techniques of the history
of spirituality) -- itappealed as much to fascism as to
anarchism. Consider for example the Myth of Progress, propagated
by all the major ideologies of the 19th century, from monarchism
to anarchism: all idolized Progress, a myth which would make the
20th Century hell for millions. And the Sorelian Myths of the
General Strike, and of Social Violence, were appropriated by Marinetti
(the ambiguous pivot between anarchism and fascism) and eventually
by Mussolini. Myth-mongering has its dangers. Unfortunately,
myth remains one of the few effective ways of talking about
"reality", which is itself far more ambiguous than any
myth.]

Elsewhere we have proposed the Tong as a possible model of organization
for realizing ediatist goals, including the TAZ itself; now belatedly
we should consider the importance of style or aesthetics in
the emergence of a successful contemporary accidental Tong. In
building a Tong, style may not be "everything", but
it certainly cannot be considered merely secondary or inessential.
The Tong must be "a work of art" in itself, like all
Immediatist game-structures. A legend such as the City of Willows
provides this essential aesthetic shape.

We might think of the "Bee" as a temporary immediatist
group organized for one project (like a quilt). But even the
Bee must both be and produce a "work of art".
The Tong by comparison can be defined as a
more long-lasting group, theoretically "permanent",
devoted not to one project but to an on-going "cause".
But what makes a Tong different from an open group, like a sect
or political arty? The members of an Immediatist Tong or TAZ
core-group may not be held together by strong class, ethnic, geographical,
or economic motives; moreover, the collaborative production of
non-commodiflable art cannot be considered by itself a sufficient
cause for the formation of a secret society. "lllegalism"
per se may add cohesiveness to the group structure, but
still cannot serve as the only raison desire of a real Tong.
Insurrectionary action or "social sabotage" provide
even stronger motivation for a clandestine "order" --
but not yet enough, perhaps, for a full-scale "invisible
college". Without "Tong aesthetics" -- no Tong.

The two essential aesthetic elements of a Tong are:': (1) a
cause; and (2) a legend. Both cause and legend can
be classed as aesthetic or "mythic" systems, rather
than as ideologies -- since they are based on symbols, which are
real but ambiguous, rather than on "ideals", which are
much more clear, but relatively un-real. When Sorel proposed
a 'social myth" (specifically the syndicat and the
General Strike) he did not mean "myth" in the modern
sense of the word -- as an empty story a palliative and illusory
narration. "Myth" in the Sorelian sense can be called
a story which is not only about "real life" but
also wants, to manifest as real life. A cause, one may argue,
is not a "real thing" because it has not yet appeared.
It is an aesthetic construct -- but it is also an Image-complex
which intends to impose its pattern on "reality", like
the hermetic spells of Renaissance magi or the ceremonies of tribal
shamans. It expresses this intention in the the form of a legend
about a cause, a symbolic narrative of highly-charged images arranged
to augment a dynamic potential ("conversion", "initiation",
"enlightenment", action") in the group which adopts
and adapts it. The cause, therefore, is the public Sorelian myth;
the legend, its private propaganda within the Tong.

The "poesis" of the City of Willows, for example, reveals
its workings in the imagery of the visionary journey, of the "Vanguard",
who sees: --

The Tong initiates like taoist sages or spiritual nomads, "far
off at the horizon (yet) near before my eyes. They roam about
the world without a fixed residence"

white herons flying past

a fan, a pear-shaped censer, a sword, a flute, two jade castanets,
a scepter, a floating bridge

the daughter of the Dragon King "gathering mulberry flowers"
(a password)

caves of drizzle, summer showers, hoarfrost

a volcano
and so on (Davis, op. cit., 132-134). These images may
seem merely decorative or arbitrary to us, but they were charged
with cultural memes for the Hung adepts, and were built
into a system which cohered not only as a "poem" but
also as a multiplexed evocation of their cause.

This poem of potential action becomes even more vital in
our immediatist Tong, since the text must serve to provide some
of the cohesion lacking in such a variegated group as ours may
be. A 'mere political program will not suffice, nor will a mere
poem. Cause and legend must point beyond (or even away from)
ideology and abstraction; the "Utopian Imagination"
and "Utopian Poetics" must be used to construct something
more than a mere daydream.

[NOTE: Not that I share the usual disdain for "reverie"
as opposed to "imagination". Like Guston Bachelard
I believe that poesis begins with daydreaming, and that
"idle fancy" is assacred as "genuine vision".
Nevertheless, in order to inspire action, the daydream must first
become a "poem", then a "legend", finally
a "cause".]

"Poetic language" here serves as a guarantee of the
genuineness of the experience which is evoked, for in matters
concerning desire only the "language of the birds" can
attain some degree of accuracy.

"Revolution" has certainly served as a poetic image
strong enough to provide the cause for numerous secret societies,
from Marx's flirtation with the Carbonari to Proudhon's anarchist
"Holy Vehm", Bakunin's "Brotherhood", Durutti's
"Wanderers", etc. "Insurrection" is a term
which might be better suited to the post-existentialist requirements
of an Immediatist Tong, however. The uprising possesses the spiritual
prestige of both apocalypse and millenium, and yet remains a genuine
historical possibility -- remote but verifiable.

[NOTE: Consider, for example, Dublin 1916, Munich 1919, Tijuana
1911, Paris 1871 and 1968, the Ukraine 1920's /Barcelona 1930's.
None of these gave rise to "the Revolution", but all
were noble and well worth the risk -- at least in retrospect!]

The TAZ, however, presents itself as an immediate possibility:
-- both as a tactic on behalf of the Cause, and as a taste or
foretaste of the cause itself. We cannot say that the TAZ "is"
the Cause, because the TAZ remains spontaneous, evanescent, impossible
to pin down. The Insurrection is the Cause; the TAZ is a tactic
for the cause, but also an "inner" raison d'etre of
the Tong. Thus when the Hung triad repeated the ritual
of the City of Willows it not only validated its eternal attachment
to the cause (the anti-Manchu uprising), but also virtually created
the "paradisal space" of the anti-Manchu world within
the Temple of the society. This ritual Time/Space might be experienced
and valued as a TAZ; and when combined with a banquet (the necessary
"material bodily principle" of the TAZ) no doubt the
adepts did experience and value it as such. The immediatist Tong
therefore would not be "founded" in order to create
TAZ' s but rather to potentiate their manifestations as prefigurations
or evocations of the Uprising and the "anti-Consensus"
reality it envisions. Ritual and conviviality do not necessarily
combine to produce the TAZ -spontaneous orderings of fractal complexities
must fall into place to produce such a "magic Moment".
One can maximize the conditions for such "luck", but
one cannot force, the Muses. As in archery, one shoots at a point
above the target in order to hit it. Here that lofty point
at which we aim must be the Insurrection, but by shooting at its
distance we may yet strike the proximity of the
TAZ -- (like those adepts who are seen both far on the horizon
and yet near to the gaze).

The legend is the story the secret society tells itself
about the cause. In some cases, such as Freemasonry, the legend
is remembered even when the cause is forgotten, so that the legend
can be re-interpreted or re-deciphered or re-read -- and the Cause
reinvested again and again. The legend, in effect, becomes the
Cause: the two texts are conflated into an illegible but powerfull
palimpsest. A good legend may come to act more potently even than
a good cause, since it taps the archetypes more directly, and
owes less to time than to Eternity.

Therefore the poesis of a legend for our Tong is no petty business.
It concerns the surface butis far from being "superficial".
Taste hereassumes a "life-or-death" seriousness,
as when one speaks of the "style" of a martial artist.
Our legend cannot simply consist of a text about the cause; rather,
it must arise from our passionate reading of the cause,
our psychic experience of its inner structure. It must have an
"objective" aspect, in other words, like that possessed
by "scripture" or "spirit writing" in the
eyes of religious believers.

Moreover, while the cause of the uprising is one which can be
served in many ways, our legend must be specific to our Tong;
it must contain a special message in a special language meant
to form a cognitive bond amongst precisely our own group.
In other words the legend serves as the exact act of poesis without
which our Tong simply will not come into focus.

Where are we rootless cosmopolitans to find a language in which
such a text could be composed, much less the text itself? The
Surrealists experimented with automatic writing, a technique also
used by Taoists and other spirit mediums. In fact, "religion"
provides a possible language for the Tong legend -- provided that
one speaks the tongue in heretical sentences. The City of Willows
combines millennarian Buddhism and the imaginal aesthetics of
Taoism with its revolutionary politics. In our accidental world
the image-complexes of many religious phenomena retain great power
-- and are thus susceptible to refiguration, or "subversion",
as heretical revolutionary texts. Imagine, for example, a secret
society devoted to the "sabotage" of reactionary Christian
dogma and policy, based on an "Anabaptist" legend espousing
the cause of radical millenialism, or even inspired by some syncretist
brand of neo-paganism. Does this sound serious and risky enough,
in today's climate of shit-kicking moralism and recrudescent "religious
conservatism", to justify both the passion and the clandestinity
of our hypothetical secret society?

A viable legend might be manifested by one person, or it might
arinse, so to speak, out of "group-dreaming" -- but
in any case it will not be produced by the rational lineal process
of fictional narrative. One does not write scripture; scripture
is written. Or better: the legend pre-exists its realization as
text, so that the "writer" acts rather as a "treasure
finder" than an "author" -- oneiric and visionary
texts partake in their extreme subjectivity of the "objectivity"
of that "subconscious" wherein (according to Taoism)
the Gods reside, and which hypostatizes in the most gripping and
inspiring ritual art. Such art may not meet the aesthetic criteria
of the academic critic, for whom it will appear either as mumbojumbo
or as agitprop. But it will light fire in the minds of certain
hearers, precisely those for whom the legend crystallized out
of the noosphere in the first place.

The Tong will be nothing without the actions which it will
carry out. But before the actions come the intentions.
The link between the intentions and actions is the text,
the legend and the cause it represents. The text draws out
the actions from the sea of potentiality to actuality. These poems
will be meaningless without the actions they invoke, and
will therefore achieve either the highest goal of poetry, or else
nothing at all. The City of Willows is not merely an "imaginary
city" but an Imaginal City, a dream-space which will be manifested
more and more clearly until finally the Ming is restored -- and
yet the City of Willows is also a poem. The legend of our Tong
is nothing but a text, true -- but it will call a world into being
-- even if only for a few moments - in which our desires are not
only articulated but satisfied.